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PPE FOR WOMEN Getting the Right Fit How women’s PPE creates a safe and inclusive job site. BY MARY PADRON Historically, PPE was designed and made for men, with little consideration for women in the workplace. At the time, this mindset was understandable because most women worked at home and not at industrial job sites. However, when men went off to war in World War II, all that changed. According to the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, “American women played important roles during World War II, both at home and in uniform. Not only did they give their sons, husbands, fathers, and brothers to the war effort, they gave their time, energy, and some even gave their lives. ... More than 6 million women took wartime jobs in factories, three million volunteered with the Red Cross, and over 350,000 served in the military.” Rosie the Riveter Do you remember Rosie the Riveter, the World War II media icon in the famous “We Can Do It” poster? The function of this poster was to recruit women for factory work to produce munitions and Images courtesy of Radians other war materials. In the poster, Rosie is wearing a red and white polka-dot red bandanna tied with a bow at the top of her head and her workwear is oversized. Her attire reflected the mindset of PPE for women at that time. More than half a century after that iconic poster appeared, a U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) advisory committee heard complaints about ill-fitting PPE and garments that were being provided to women in non-traditional jobs. Their 1999 report determined that “poor-fitting protective equipment and clothing frequently did not function in the manner for which it was designed; accordingly, protection that the gear was supposed to deliver was compromised—leading to serious health and safety risks for women in those trades.” Then in 2020, COVID-19 exponentially exposed gender inequities around the fit and design of PPE in the medical community. “Although women make up 70% of the health workforce, 28 Occupational Health & Safety | JUNE 2023 www.ohsonline.com